From Viz:Ryoma Echizen just joined the Seishun Academy's tennis team, which is known for being one of the most competitive teams in Japan. Its members are incredibly talented, gifted, and athletic. With rigorous and extremely intense practices, the upperclassmen of the team expect the very best from themselves and they expect even more from the new members of the team. While most of the freshmen are on pins and needles hoping they won't get cut from the team, Ryoma Echizen is confident, cool, and collected. Some might even say he's cocky, but at least he's got the skills to back up his attitude. With his virtually unreturnable "twist serve," Ryoma is sure to make the starting team. Join Ryoma and the other first years, as they train hard, make friends, and try to find a place for themselves on the team. And meet Ryoma's cute but chronically shy classmate Sakuno Ryuzaki. She's got a big crush on Ryoma, but will he ever notice her? Ryoma Echizen is the Prince of Tennis. He may be ready for the Seishun Academy tennis team, but are they ready for him?

I am shocked to see even people of my age acting as if Prince of Tennis is stupid and exaggerated, forgetting that this is perfectly representing the age of our generation. It is ok for people to criticize it for shortcomings or bad script or whatever else, but when I see people giving it a bad mark because it does not reflect reality, it makes me wonder what these people are thinking.

Video games of my generation were like this, exaggerated and full of super duper fantasy moves. Even of I know 0 about Tennis. I am sure a lot of moves are taken from real life actual techniques and mixed with super powers. But when I watch this I feel I am actually watching an anime representing perfectly the mindset of people of late 90ies.

Again, I do not get why peiple judge it for what it is not; A realistic representation of tennis. Even one I picked up lately, Baby Steps, even if realistic it has to mix in a bit of impossible to pull moves, because simply it is NOT an emulated story of real life.

I am not one to care for Yaoi and thankfully I see nothing of Yaoi moments or mood. Then again I do not see such moments in even manga that actually show a strong mood for it, but that is probably because I am not interested in such.

All in all I am giving this a 10, because is succeeds to entertain people that it is meant for. For people that was real tennis, better look elsewhere. For people that love old manga/anime and their stupidly exaggerated mood, you are on the right place!

As several reviewers have noted already, this manga is really great for all the pretty boys and possible permutations of couples that can be created for fanfiction. The fanfiction for this fandom is actually really good, which is the reason I started reading and forced myself to finish all 42 volumes in the first place. The new characters that pop up get more and more interesting, and I always find myself rooting for other schools besides Seigaku. If you're looking for a manga with lots of character development, realistic take on sports and sports achievement, and an interesting plot, this is not the manga for you. But if you're looking to read some really interesting and fun yaoi fanfiction, I suggest reading this manga. Seriously, some of fanfiction is better than the manga itself. I find myself really liking the character designs too, they are pretty memorable and everyone looks different from each other.

The Prince of Tennis is a very interesting sports manga about the story of genius. Now, to begin with, I'm a sucker for strong-in-the-beginning protagonists, but even more if they continue to develop their skill. However, nearing the end and in the second season, it became less... realistic and more "magical". Because of that, this manga is now 'good enough' in my books. I would read again, though.

Meh, finished up to chapter 122 in 3 days, then I dropped it.. Same repeating story, new opponent=strong=defeats some good opponents=our hero defeats them, meh.. too much meaningless competitions, but if you exclude these, its a good manga..

As someone said before, this manga is not really about Tennis. It is rather an action manga masked with Tennis. It's full of special moves. Despite the fact that very few of which are real, the manga does what it should do: entertain readers. I'm not irritated with the characters' supernatural power of playing Tennis at all.

The art is ok; it was a bit weird at first but improved a lot as the story went. Its end is also good. The characters actually don't have enough backgrounds as I would like, but this happens regularly in Shounen's and I therefore don't really care. Although I may not say 'Oh My God. Read this! It's absolutely great', I never regret having read it.

The series itself is an above-average manga, and perfect on its own. To be blunt, the sequel, which sucks, is not needed.

I like the manga and anime a lot. Though the moves aren't realistic, you can see that there is hardship and hardworking require to be able to aim/achieve a goal. It takes a lot of practice, and through the serie you can see each individual player grows not only Echizen. If the serie is all about him, that won't be interesting. But the serie isn't only about him. The other side of his teammates and the determation each one of them have to set an goal on. Plus, there are matches where the team loses so it is fair that the story should revolved around Echizen since he is the prince of Tennis.

Prince of Tennis is a fantasy-styled shounen sports manga. Actually, it started out rather mild and tamed, and the tennis was just simply tennis. But it evolved into Dragonball-like tennis moves that are impossible to achieve in real life (at one point, one of the characters hones in a stray tennis ball just by using his aura?) and thatís really the downfall of the manga. It canít decide whether it wants to be modern-day slice-of-life style, or alternate universe in which people can leap twenty feet in the air, make a tennis ball spin around like a tornado, seeing peopleís bones with the naked eye, can turn their skin red and power up their tennis, and for some reason, itís possible for a human to skid forwards on his feet and ... still keep on going.

If Prince of Tennis stuck with realism, weíd have a nice contained manga about an arrogant 12 year old boy followed by a cast of over 50 other pretty boys who play tennis.

To be honest, they should have just ditched the tennis, and made it about 50 pretty boys instead, because thatís why anyone actually likes Prince of Tennis; the boys. The large cast of pretty boys. Oh, thereís like 3 girls in the entire series, and theyíre useless and contribute nothing to the story, so not only is it bad at showcasing tennis, but itís also very misogynist.

But be warned, just because it has so many characters, doesnít mean they actually get developed. None of them do. Absolutely none. They start out one way, and havenít changed a bit at the end of the series. Maybe they won or lost a few matches, and got stronger at tennis, but thatís it. Thereís no development in their personality, no friendships or relationships are developed either. How you meet them in the beginning, is how they will be at the end.

The best part is that the anime version of Prince of Tennis creates fillers that makes the main cast bond with each other, and it works out! The anime is much more enjoyable because of these filler episodes that focus on the characters only, and not about stupid fantasy tennis. The manga however, is all tennis, tennis, and tennis. And that is really the mangaís downfall, because it sucks at making the tennis look interesting, engaging or even worthwhile.

Oh, the main character also never loses. Heís a 12 year old prodigy who says Ďcheí a lot and acts like heís the best tennis player in the world. You either really, really hate him, or love him.

Iím not a fan of Prince of Tennis, I donít like the manga (not a fan of the anime either, but it's definitely more enjoyable), and I really donít care about the characters. I do however, like two of them, because theyíre fun and have an interesting dynamic together Ė but two characters donít save an entire series that isnít even focused on them.

Want to read about tennis? Try Baby Steps instead. Want to read about a cast full of pretty boys? Prince of Tennis is the manga for you.

I mean on the one hand, it's always nice to root for the seemingly-underdog-character-who's-actually-a-bit-of-a-badass. It does raise very good tension in its tennis matches.

But the utter lack of character development on the part of the main character is disappointing. Also some of the apparently witty retorts and comebacks fall flat on me. I can tell from the characters' reactions that A-san has just been verbally owned by B-san, but I can't for the life of me work out why. The unrealism of it all I can deal with, it's a manga. If I wanted realism, I'd watch Wimbledon, but it pushes it sometimes. Like tennis players literally beating each other bloody with the force of their serves. And sometimes I have trouble telling people apart, such is the art. Average marks from me.

I used to follow Prince of Tennis, back when it was still on the regional matches. I actually think (yes, present tense) the beginning was good; it followed the shonen sports formula to a T, but it had good matches and decent characters.

Somewhere along the lines, PoT began to lose me - not because the matches got increasingly ridiculous, but because the manga was making me care about the main team less and less. It simply boiled down to the fact that I really don't care to see Ryoma win because he is an annoying little brat who doesn't really have much characterization and his opponents are much more interesting. The thing about Ryoma is that he "grows" automatically, spontaneously in the middle of a match. There's no rationale or drama behind it, you simply know by previous experience with the manga that he'll reach limit break mode somewhere along the lines and explode during a match. There is no real development there, whereas with other classic sports shonen leads, you see that growth and development in the character as they slowly overcome the obstacles in their way. Eyeshield21's Sena is really the best example of this.

Anyway, this is probably a personal preference kind of thing, but I really wanted to offer an alternate view of why people would dislike this manga as opposed to the usual "lol ridiculous skills" argument. In terms of making a good main character, this manga really failed - there's no real reason to follow a sports shonen when you don't care to see the main character win.

Have a guy that's underestimated, make some upsets, make him meet real opponents, level-up, win in the end. That's the standard shounen storyline, and Prince of Tennis doesn't deviate even one bit. Every character you see goes through roughly the same things: realization, going beyond perceived limits, actualizing hidden potential and taking victory on the strength of comrades. Artwork is good, but below-average by other Shounen's standards.

Prince of Tennis could've been improved, however, if the author had tried harder to elucidate more history - for example, more detail on the Tezuka-Fuji relationship rather than simply "we're great rivals/friends", more events between Oishi and Kikumaru and what made them so close. Of course, we could also see more on the coaches' and schools' rivalries. Naturally, Echizen Nanjirou could've played a bigger role than sometimes-dad, sometimes-playboy and background bogeyman.